Climate change prevailing concern

Opinion: What Congress should address

What are the legislative priorities for Congress as its members returned this week? That's easy. For far too many of them the priority is to suck up to as many billionaires as possible. Refuse to cooperate with the other party. Accept no responsibility for ignoring America's problems. Instead point fingers and obfuscate. Fortunately not all are like that.

What should Congress' priorities be? No. 1 has to be climate change. If we remain in denial too long, it will be irreversible, civilization will collapse, and many species — possibly including us — will become extinct. In that case, what happens to the economy, civil rights, income inequality, government spying, and the Islamic State, etc., won't matter.

What else? Almost all Americans want peace and prosperity, a country and a world "with liberty and justice for all." So working toward that should also be a priority, not trying to sabotage negotiations. Neither liberty nor peace can be had unless societies are committed to justice. Corruption results in injustice. Majorities need to respect and protect the rights of minorities if there is to be justice. People in other countries are denied justice when we support dictators.

There's a lot that Congress could and should do, such as protecting one of our most important rights — the right to vote. But as long as ideology, partisanship and hating our president matter more for far too many than doing the job they were hired to do — represent us — gridlock will prevail and little will get done. Our real problems will continue to be ignored.